Tag: Planning

It’s now less than a week until I head off on my adventure. I’ve stopped sleeping quite as well as I used to. That’s totally normal right?

I keep needing to check dates and getting frustrated I don’t have my itinerary in one place (I mostly blame this on travelling with multiple groups of people) so I’ve decided that right here is the perfect place to store that info in a nice simplified form. As an added bonus it means that you, yes you dear reader, can see where I’m going to be and, if you’re going to be in the same place, you can (and should) fire me a message so we can catch up.

All the countries I’m heading through, with far more weight given to NA than it should have.

The last month has seen some world politics driven changes and I’m now down to nine countries over three months. Hopefully that’s the last changes that’ll need to be made and the plan below will mostly reflect reality. Hopefully…
Anyway, here’s the abbreviated list of where Tom is going to be and when. If our paths are crossing let me know.

June27: Pack, move out of flat and then LEAVE NZ!27-30: Vancouver, CanadaJuly1-8: Bodø, Norway. At Nord, the Norwegian Jamboree
9-23: Topdeck tour from Oslo. Up through Norway and down through Finland to Tallinn, Estonia
23-4: Reykjavik, Iceland. Mostly spent at World MootAugust
4-5: Zurich, Switzerland. With Aussie Post Tour
6-18: Kandersteg, Switzerland. With the Aussie post tour then potentially heading off exploring other places before flying out of Geneva
18-21: Skipton, England
21-27: Athens, Greece
27-1: New York and Washington D.C, USA. Couple days in each most likelySeptember1-2: Edmonton, Canada
3-9: Road trip from Calgary to Vancouver via Drumheller, Jasper and Banff
10-11: Seattle, USA
11-23: Road trip from San Francisco to LA via Yosemite, Death Valley, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Phoenix
25: Home? Find a new place to live…

I’ll be out of the country for just under three months, but because I like where I live so much I had been planning on continuing to pay rent while away. Then my roof started leaking. And my landlord wasn’t exactly onto it with getting the leak fixed. Eventually (two months after the leak started), I came to my senses and realised I should probably just cut my losses and move out when I head away. It does mean a bit more stress at either end of travelling, but that’s more than made up for by the money I save while I’m gone.

According to my super accurate scale models I can maybe, just barely, fit everything I own into my van. So over the weeks before I leave I now have a pretty solid excuse to go through all my stuff and get rid of some of it. I’ve been trying to be better about being a minimalist for the last few years (anything stored at your parents totally doesn’t count right?), but I’ve found it hard to get rid of things if there’s even a small chance I might want them in the future. Since I know this is one of my weaknesses, this time round I’m going to stick to the 20/20 rule. If I’m debating whether to keep something and it can be replaced for under $20 in under 20 minutes it’s gone.

Update: Two days later this is the stuff I’m getting rid of!

As well as leaving less stuff behind, I’m also trying to limit what I’m taking with me. I have to take a tent, sleeping bag, and bedroll (as well as hiking gear and full Scout uniform), which means no carry on only travel like some crazy people I know. The plan then, is to have a decent amount of empty space in my 60L pack. This is in part to keep things simple and easy to organise, part having less weight to carry around, and part just to prove I can. Plus I’m still trying to justify taking 4kgs of Scout Blanket with me, so I’ve got to cut weight and space elsewhere.

Hopefully everything goes as smoothly as planned when I’m packing in LESS THAN FOUR WEEKS TIME!